Should a reward be offered on missing dogs?

This is a question I am asked alot…Thank you Wayne May …DogLost, SAMPA and Artisan Rescue for your thoughts below.

Dog theft and rewards.

Its understandable after having a pet stolen, that you would give anything or pay anything to recover your much loved pet and member of the family.

After many years liasing with other organisations and serving police officers, and myself being a victim of dog theft the term REWARD opens doors for the opportunist thief and / or the career criminal that prey on pet owner’s and there pets.

I would suggest changing the term reward to finder’s fee with no designated amount.

This puts the owner in charge of what they see reasonable to cover anyone’s costs in finding your pet. This will also reduce the risk of prank calls, or owners paying a reward or ransom to an unknown individual.

By offering a finders fee only, will make the pet less attractive to criminals. Lets be honest its far easier to steal a dog and lower risk with less charges, than stealing a car or robbery and the rewards can more substantial.

United we can take this away from the criminal fraternity, make pet theft less desirable and less rewarding.

Remember you can be legally responsible to pay a specified reward even if you know the person / person’s stole your pet.

David walkee 1 year ago

Bronson my akita was stolen in 2012 i met a person that said he had him. I paid £500 reward to get him back. Once i handed the money over they went and said Bronson will be dropped off in 5 minutes.they never did. He was found by a dog warden in another county. Will never offer. A reward again
Finders fee is the way forward. Great article doglost

nicky brooks 1 year ago

Andrew Angell 1 year ago

Nice to see doglost covering more topics, especially ones so relevant.
I too had my dogs stolen, sadly i have never seen them again.
Finders fee is more acceptable than offering a reward, the heart always rules the mind in these situations. Thank you Wayne and doglostuk

Maggie 1 year ago

I disagree with this. Putting finders fee on a dogs poster that’s just gone missing (not stolen) is suggesting to anyone that finds the dog they will get paid in money, FEE means to me money, so that’s not going to help if anything it will make it worse If people think they are going to get money for finding some ones pet. I believe the wording REWARD OFFERED is better and can mean a number of things for a reward! Missing and stolen are completely different!!

Helen Burton 1 year ago

As an owner of a dog that has been missing for nearly a year now, I am so pleased that this has been raised.I often get told ,” you need to advertise a reward to get your dog back”, and get very strange looks when I say ” No”. My dog is equally precious to me as anybody who offers thousands of pound reward, but I feel that I owe it to other dog owners not to encourage this disgusting ‘easy money’ attitude by the sort of morons that take our dogs for this reason. Its very hard to make this decision,especially with the response that is sometimes given ,but I feel its the only responsible thing to do , for everyone and their dogs. I would quite willingly pay any expenses that have been incurred by individuals, groups, rescues that are dog loving people who genuinely help find my dog, but refuse to encourage the scurge that are making a living at the expense of the welfare of all dogs.!

Sarah Williams 1 year ago

We do have a reward though only a modest one as we are not rich and we wont ask for money for a reward that may never be needed…

Does it help? Well over 4 years later we still have nothing so no rewards don’t seem to help UNLESS (and this is why we did it) a certain branch of society used to be willing to give them back for a reward…..

Those days have gone.

Now thieves know the law in the UK wont touch them (yes we do support the petition lol) They know scanning for chips is abysmal (yep we support #ScanMe lol) They have an almost 100% chance of getting away with it.

BSB brings them in thousands to….

The bottom line is well Doglost I not going to name her but I know some of you will immediately know which beautiful dog I am talking about 10,000 didn’t bring either news of her or her home so I think there is your answer?

There is no deterrent… The police are patchy at best over animal theft.

As owners we had no help. We were useless as we learned too late what we should have done and the thieves can and do make bigger money than a reward we can pay would give them….

For us though because Pup is stolen we don’t stress the reward but its there so implies IF someone has bought her in good faith we are willing to buy her back…

Are we wrong? I don’t know but I do know hell will freeze before we raise money (and often huge money) for a reward that may never be needed. That is a new trend and one we wont ever follow … If we look like we are going to yell at us please 😉

Oh and yes we had the fraud merchants come after us to…. for 2,000 they would give us our dog…They wouldn’t meet us WITH our dog and we wouldn’t give them the money till they did BUT We set the fraud squad on them AND best of all because they rang forgetting to with hold their number I rang them every 10 mins for 24 hours …wanted them to know how to felt lol .. I had waited so long for a chance to fight back I think I went into overdrive lol

Owners are desperate and all of us would do anything we could just to get our family member home … We no different and were we rich we might have a huge reward but it wouldn’t help us find Pups